I have become a little more reluctant to talk to casual acquaintances about cars. If I say that I drive a Porsche, there seems to be a tendency to stereotype me. "Porsche, huh? You must be rich". Never mind that my car predates the high school graduation of the person asking. It also cost me less than the average Oregon pick-up truck.
Isn't it interesting how people become defined by the car they drive? The individual passing judgment may have no idea how or why the particular car was purchased. Perhaps it was a gift or inheritance. What you drive can mean different things to different people. It is all too common one person to be put into a group based on the opinion of another. It is a demonstration of prejudice in a mechanical environment. When the automobile began to become more common in the 20's, it still remained primarily an appliance of utility, not of leisure. Initial car owners were, with few exceptions, using the car as a tool. By the time of the Depression, many families owned cars. They provided the owner a degree of freedom not previously experienced. Work, perhaps at higher salary, could be found farther from the home. On weekends the family had the ability to visit other towns. The car was so much a part of the American culture photos of Dust Bowl farmers in overburdened automobiles became a testimony to the plight of the Midwestern refugees.
By the time of the nations' economic recovery, cars were being used more for entertainment than before. Country folk were driving into the city for a night on the town or driving to other cities to partake in special events. An ever improving road system allowed commerce to swell and provided access to different vacation possibilities. After the second World War, the building boom that resulted in the suburban phenomenon moved many outside the city limits. Cars were still most commonly used for work (commuting), but changes in styling and additions of other creature comforts made time in the automobile more comfortable. According to Christopher Finch, in his book Highways to Heaven, car radios existed in the twenties and thirties, but were found only in the upscale models. By the time the fifties rolled around, they were available on nearly every make and model, although often as an extra.
I can remember car radios in the fifties. As kids we would sometimes go to the junk yard and get old radios for next to nothing so that we could play with all the dials and the tubes. You remember tubes, the equivalent to transistor dinosaurs? My first car did not have a radio. I had the opportunity to add one myself. My choices were two. First, and a no brainer, was it to be AM or FM? It was FM all the way. Who needed top 40 when you were coming of age in the sixties? The second decision was driven by my college income (read: nearly zero). Should I get a push button or a dial tune radio? Guess. Shortly after my marriage, we both traded in our daily drivers for a shared new car. It was not a year later that I had an 8 track installed, out of sight, in the glove box. How surprisingly similar today with CD changes squirreled away in the trunk.
While there were always automobiles that stood out from the crowd, the big difference between the cars before WWII and after was that variety was now available to those with less than a bank president's income. There were still many domestic auto manufacturers, although the slip down the drain was coming for some. Chevrolet was the car to have and Harley Earl was the man to sell it to you. Every year the cars were different and the jet age was alive in the styling of the decade. Cars were adorned with fins and ports aplenty. By the mid fifties, Chevrolet had a virtual lock on styling (although there are some of us who love the '56 Crown Victoria). Pontiac cars had the muscle and were kicking serious butt in the stock car circles. The point was that you could get so many options on so many different models within a single make (brand) that you could purchase a car that fit your lifestyle or personal taste. You did not have to be royalty or a captain of industry to own the exact car you wanted. By the mid sixties, manufacturer's began to pop big motors into mid sized sedans and the era of the muscle car was born. Testosterone that had been channeled into hot rods in the forties and fifties was now available right on the showroom floor.
European cars were becoming more popular and more available in the early fifties. We all know the story of the MG in the USA. I doubt that any other single car had so much impact on the growth of the sports car in America. British cars remained both plentiful and affordable throughout the sixties and right up into the early seventies. By then, Federal safety mandates combined with shoddy quality to eliminate them from the market place. Beginning in the late fifties, at least where I grew up, more and more Porsches were seen. These cars were out of the budget range of most of the people I knew. The same held true as I grew older. In our college age group there was one guy who had one, but most of us had the English iron. Porsche always represented a high cost investment, but the cars were legendary. Small engines, good engineering. It became a hallmark of sports car success. If you had a Porsche, or so the thinking went in our group of non- owners, you had the best. Except for maybe a Ferrari, but then they were, well, Ferrari. Sour grapes methinks.
For the American car, the move out of the gas shortage years and into the early 80's brought about a different change. There were not only fewer manufacturers, there were fewer models to choose from within those ranks. Performance was out. Economy was in. Cars with high horsepower were now pretty much exclusively available only from the continent. Most of those were Italian. The age of the muscle car was out. The age of the super car, and the super price tag, was in. With the exception of those exotics, the age of unique styling was also down the drain. Cars from the same manufacturer were badged differently but the same underneath. As we moved into the 90's the cars began to all look alike, regardless of who made them. On two separate occasions I saw magazine articles that offered up silhouettes and asked the reader to identify the car with the names offered on the page. It was the era of the Jell-O mold car.
During the 80's I had a longing for another sports car. Pop psychology would call this a
rush into my second childhood. Trying to regain the recklessness of my youth. Whatever.
I had sold my Sprite in 1978. We had two babies in diapers and two dogs. The station
wagon we bought when we married was serving our needs well. Quite frankly, I could not
afford to drag along a high maintenance car (that was torn apart at the time) in our move
to Oregon. We survived with only our station wagon for about five years. After a brief
stint with a
wonderful Toyota Celica, I longed for a true sports car. In fact, I longed for that very
same sports car that I had sold nine years before. Perhaps it was regression. Within a few
short weeks it was apparent that the Sprite was gone. My attempts to locate it slowed
down once the realities of the cars' reliability were recalled. In the end, I decided that it
was not the car to have, but with about $5000 to spend, what would I get? Notice here
that I was not trying to fit an image. I wanted to buy a car that had certain features and
fell within a budget range, brand name be damned. I liked the Lotus Elan, but had read
some stories about it being on the low end of the reliability scale. Still, it took a trip to see
one at Monte Shelton's dealership to convince me. They had a car stuffed in the back
corner of the garage. One tire was flat. The battery was too. It was not washed. The
hood was not hinged, it just lifted off. What a box of kitty litter.
Porsche was not in my first list of cars. I still subscribed to the notion that they were too expensive for me to own, and that most owners were snobs of the first order. I looked at the launch into my second childhood a little differently after the Lotus experience. What was it that I wanted in a car? I definitely wanted a sports car. Like the car buyers in the fifties, I wanted a car that would give me what I was looking for, not a car that delivered good gas mileage and conservative design. My next choice was the Datsun 240Z. I was breaking from tradition and going Japanese. The original "Z" was a very good looking car and had performance that matched the appearance. Problem was, there were not many to choose from. I looked for a few weeks and got the feeling that something was missing. Then it hit me. For as much of a sports car as it was, it was not very different from my Celica. It is a fast back coupe with mini seats in the rear. I needed a car that had a removable top. I wanted a car that would be hard pressed to put into use as a family hauler or grocery cart. Again, I drifted to the British cars. Again I let distorted memories of my college years get the best of me. My friend Scott had a TR-3A. I really liked this car. It had a throaty roar (which might have been due to the state of the muffler) and reasonable power. More than that, it had great styling. The low cut doors were to die for.
The year I got out of the Army, Scott and I went to the San Francisco International Car Show. The 914 was new at the time and I liked the styling right away. It was small and simple. I did not care about the controversy in the contemporary magazine articles. Under powered, they claimed. Bad styling they said. Not a REAL Porsche, just a Volkswagen with pretensions. All of this fed my stereotype of the Porsche crowd, but I sure liked the car.
This was deep in my subconscious as I began looking for a sports car. Certainly it must have been because I started looking at the 914. I read more about the car and found it fit the bill perfectly. I knew that I wanted a car that I could eventually show. It had to be in reasonably good condition. I also wanted to stick with a '73 or '74 two liter car since they were the best, apart from having a 914-6. I made up my mind to look at as many as I could. That way I could get some idea of what was "out there". Included in that batch was a 1971 914-6 that I liked. The only problem was that it was $7000 (about 40% above my budget) and needed both tires and a clutch. I looked for about three months. While I was looking I also kept my eyes open for a TR-3. The only thing that made me dubious about buying a Triumph was it would be ten or more years older than a 914. Still..the styling had a hook into me.
In July of 1987 I found three interesting cars in the Auto Trader. Two were 914 and one a TR-3A. The first of the 914 was local, and about $4000. I met Mario (no kidding) at his home in Beaverton and was less than impressed with the car. It was a 75, so it was not the year that I was looking for. It had no lockout on the reverse gear and he told me (after I had ground the gears in a shift to second) that he did that all the time. It was a repaint, and although shiny, was not all that good. It was too late to see the TR, and the cost was about $5000 anyhow, so I figured that it would wait until the next day. When I got home I called the owner of the other 914. He wanted $5500 for his 1974 two liter. I asked him why it was so much more than any of the other cars I had looked at. He gave me a list of the reasons and agreed to meet me at a point halfway between our two towns.
The following weekend, I took the Celica out to Scapoose to meet the seller. As he drove
up, I knew that I had found the car that I wanted. Surprisingly original, he was selling
because of apprehension about his teenage daughter driving the car. We discussed prices
briefly and I gave him some earnest money so that I could gather the cash. When the
papers were exchanged the next weekend I had a peach of a car. It was well-taken care of
and had quite an extensive set of records. On that scale of 10, it was a solid 7. Over the
next three or four years I put both time and money into the car. At one point, I figured
the cost of operation by dividing the total mileage by the expenditures (not including gas).
Let me give you a tip. Don't do it. Predictably the car has been more expensive to
operate than the Celica would have been. But the fun! Lord, the fun. I also found that
the Porsche people I met were pretty good folks too. Many of them mirrored my own
experiences in British car ownership. I met very few that did not consider the 914 a
Porsche, not that it really mattered to me. I can remember relishing a T-shirt given to me
by a friend at work. It said, "My other Porsche is a Volkswagen." I wore it to all the
ORPCA events those first few years.
In 1993 the unthinkable happened. My 914 was involved in a wreck. I have told the story too many times to repeat the whole thing. Suffice it to say, the car was written off by the insurance company. In the six months before getting it back again I often considered getting another Porsche. By now I was convinced that, as much as I wanted that TR-3, it would be a money pit. I doubted that I could trust it to run a thousand miles without fear of some kind of failure. Design wise, I loved the 911 coupe. The simple lines of the pre- 74 car were classic. Heck, Porsche has been using the basic coupe shape for nearly forty years now. Stephanie and I happened upon an '87 at an old haunt. You guessed it, Monte Shelton's. This time, I had very little to say about the car. Steph loved it. The color is unusual. The car is very comfortable. Although I had to dip into savings to afford it, it really was not all that expensive. I had subscribed to the same misconception that many of my friends did. If it was a Porsche, it must cost $60,000. In fact, we paid less for it than we would have for a new Chrysler minivan. It was about 25% less than the Ram pick up truck that my friend at the fire station just bought.
Yes, I do have a regular car. Yes, I do find myself wondering why I have two Porsches in the garage with it. There is no way that I can drive all of them as much as I would like to. I am well and surely blessed by the good fortune to have cars for recreation. I do love these Porsches. They are so awesome. Power. Handling. Please don't stereotype me as a Porsche fanatic though. If I had more room (and more disposable income), I might still pick up that TR-3A. I can also find room for a '67 Pontiac GTO. I have read that you can get a Ferrari 308 for less than a late 80's 911 now. Anybody see my copy of Hemmings?
